Ava Ogden
OOC
| Game | Journal | Portrayed By |
|---|---|---|
| New Salem | the_palindrome | Felicia Day |
Basic Stats
Full Name: Ava Lucy Ogden
Nickname(s): None
Gender: Female
Age: 32
Date of Birth: August 23, 1977
Zodiac: Virgo
Sexuality: Straight
Relationship Status: Single
Bloodline: Pureblood
Hometown: Caerphilly, Wales
Current Residence: Dunmoody, Ireland
House & Year: Hufflepuff 1995
Occupation: Gravedigger
Pet: None
Family
Father: Tiberius Cadell Ogden (wizard; Ravenclaw 1957; former Wizengamot Elder; President & CEO: Ogden's Old Firewhisky Company)
Mother: Elisabeth Mary Ogden (witch; Gryffindor 1965)
Brother: Nicholas Dominic Ogden (wizard; Ravenclaw 1997)
History
Ava was too young to remember the first war, having been only four years old when Voldemort was defeated the first time by the infant Harry Potter. So she got to grow up, for the most part, during a time of peace. She was the elder of two children to Tiberius and Elisabeth Ogden, born right near the end of August in 1977, followed shortly by younger brother Nicholas. Ava and Nick were primarily raised by their mother (who didn't believe that children should be raised by nannies), because their father was rarely around. Oh, sure, he slept at the house and occasionally ate meals there, but Ava hardly saw her father as she was growing up. Tiberius was completely caught up in his job as a member of the Wizengamot, often spending long hours at the office working on things, or bringing stacks of papers home to pore over for hours in his study. Oftentimes, he was gone before the children woke in the morning and didn't come home until much after they had gone to bed. And on top of his job with the Wizengamot, he also steadily through the late 80s and early 90s started taking on more and more responsibilities at the family company (Ogden's Old Firewhiskey Company) as his father's health started flagging.
When she did see her father, however, Ava loved him. Even though he was mostly-absentee, he was still her daddy, and he doted on her and Nick when he was around.
Ava was a loud, rambunctious child. She loved getting attention from whomever would give it to her, and thrived on it. Unfortunately, she wasn't always getting attention that she planned on getting. From the moment she could crawl, she was a moving epicenter of disaster. If there was something to be tripped over or run into or crashed through, Ava managed to do so. More than once, her parents were investigated for possible child abuse, simply because of the frequency with which she was admitted to St. Mungo's with broken bones, bruises, bloody cuts, black eyes, all manner of physical injury. It helped the family's case significantly that Ava was seen accidentally hurting herself on multiple occasions when it clearly could not have been at any fault of her parents.
Other than her habit of getting hurt with alarming frequency, Ava's childhood was relatively quiet. Her mother insisted on riding lessons until the second time she fell and broke her arm (which also happened to be the second time she was on a horse at all), after which she insisted on ballet … until Ava broke her leg. After that, Elisabeth stopped pushing Ava into lessons of any sort beyond academics. When Ava went off to Hogwarts at the age of eleven, her mother sent a letter off to Madam Pomfrey to give her ample warning of the patient she was about to have for the next seven years.
Ava's Hogwarts years were a blur of classes, friends, quidditch matches (just cheering them on … do you really think she would risk flying when she couldn't even ride a horse without breaking her arm?), and — of course — injuries. Her seventh year was the year of the Triwizard Tournament, and even though she was old enough to enter, she figured that if she did, and if by some completely insane chance the goblet acutally picked her, she'd probably die. It completely shook her up that yearmate Cedric Diggory, for whom she cheered the entire tournament, actually did die. For a while, she was afraid that she'd somehow passed some kind of bad luck on to him.
Once she graduated from Hogwarts, her father started pushing for her to get involved in the family company, especially now that he was doing full double-duty as both the head of the company (Ava's grandfather retired from the position the previous summer) and as a Wizengamot Elder. Ava knew that she could very easily get a job in the company without even trying, but she felt that was too easy and a bit dishonest, that she was only getting the job because it was her family's company. Besides, she had always been far too active and enjoyed the outdoors far too much to settle for a job that would tether her behind a desk for the prime outside hours of the day. And she saw what running the company had done to her grandfather and was doing to her father, and she knew that they would want the same for her.
So instead, she thanked her father for the opportunity, and she got a job at a nearby cemetery instead. She got it on her own accord, not because of her family, and she started at the bottom with tending to graves. She learned how to do it both by hand and through using magic (in fact, her boss insisted that she learn to do it by hand first, so that she understood exactly how much work went into this job, and then she was taught the various spells to make the work go more quickly). Ava absolutely loved getting her hands dirty, and although she continued to get injured on a fairly frequent basis, she loved her job. It didn't pay well, but she had a sizeable trust fund set up, so she had that available to fall back on if she needed a little extra to make the month's rent, but she tried really hard to not rely on it.
Within a couple of years, she had been promoted to digging graves as well as tending existing ones (and again, she learned both the muggle and magical methods of digging graves). Unfortunately, Ava becoming a gravedigger was more of a necessity for the cemetery than anything else: the war was in full swing and there were getting to be too many graves that would need to be dug. Ava never asked who the graves she was digging were for, but she still found herself looking for familiar names as she tended the graves after they were filled and the tombstones were up.
After the war, even though the rate at which graves needed to be dug decreased, she continued working both as a gravedigger and a gravetender. Despite the fact that she had a habit of falling into freshly-dug graves and getting hurt. She loved her job at the cemetery, and even though her father kept not-so-subtly hinting that a job would always be available for her at the company (which was now his only job: he had resigned from the Wizengamot in protest after Dolores Umbridge was made High Inquisitor of Hogwarts in the next year after Ava had graduated), she was determined to stick with her own job.
She also had to field a lot of less-than-subtle hints from both of her parents about finding a nice boy to settle down with. Neither Tiberius nor Elisabeth seemed to understand that Ava was perfectly happy to live on her own and work on her own and that she was also perfectly happy to be single. She had relationships of a sort, a few dates here and there, a few flings, but nothing serious.
When the new wizarding village of Dunmoody was founded, Ava was among the first to move into the area. She had grown tired of her small flat and longed for more space, and she could just manage to afford a small two-bedroom flat in the Dearborn Park building. She lived there by herself for a few years until one of her best friends was going through a divorce from his horrific shrew of a wife. As the shrew managed to end up with the house, Ava offered Roddy use of the second bedroom in her flat. She had mostly just been using it for storage, and was happy to free up the room for her best friend.
For the past few years, Ava has been happily sharing a flat with one of her very best friends (who cares if it happens to be a bloke? She's not attracted to Roddy — sorry mate — and it's nice having company sometimes, and someone who can come get you from the hospital and floo or side-along you home when you're doped up on pain potions) and working at the cemetery. She currently has no plans to change either of those situations, despite the fact that her parents have upped their non-subtle suggestions of marriage and joining the family company ever since she turned 30 almost three years ago.
Personality
Ava is loud and proud. She likes to make her presence known even in a crowded room. She's enthusiastic and cheerful, always willing to do anything she can for a friend. She's also fairly convinced that she's one of the guys, nevermind the fact that she has all the girly bits. She'll chug beer and burp with the guys, and she tends to cringe at anything traditionally considered girly. Except for three things: she loves anything pink, she loves anything sparkly, and she loves dresses with twirly skirts. Of course, she pairs those twirly-skirted dresses with leggings, jeans, and/or combat boots.
She's a hard worker, but she'll rarely take the lead in something. preferring to do the hard work and letting others do the planning. She absolutely loves working with her hands. This is one of the reasons she has continued to pass up her father's frequent offers of a position in the family company in favour of remaining a gravedigger: she likes being able to just work outside all day and get dirt under her fingernails, not having to worry about making decisions or anything like that.
Ava has an incredibly morbid and dark sense of humour. Some might think that it comes from working in a cemetery, but her sense of humour was morbid long before her job. She's full of bad jokes about working in a cemetery, as well as jokes about her own tendency to get hurt just standing still and about hospitals. She also has a slight tendency towards sarcasm, especially when people ask her when she's going to find herself a nice man to settle down with. She's very independent and, while she'll date, she shies away from getting serious with anyone.
She also has a slight obsession with zombies. The muggle version of zombies, the ones that come out of the ground and go around eating people, not inferi. She's not all that convinced that zombies could actually come to life and go around eating people, but she loves zombie films and books, and she'd be happy to debate zombies with anyone interested.
Quirks, Features, and Habits
- She has broken both arms, both legs, her right wrist three times, her left wrist once, both ankles several times each, several fingers several times apiece, a couple toes, her nose about five times, her tailbone twice, most of her ribs (not all at once), and her collarbone. She's also cracked her skull a few times.
- At least once a month, she falls into a grave she just finished digging.
- She's on a first-name basis with a lot of the Healers at St. Mungo's. No, she doesn't think there's anything weird about that. She also generally knows at least one Healer who's on duty no matter what time she's brought in.
- Despite the red hair and freckles, she is not a Weasley. Not that there's anything wrong with being a Weasley, she just isn't one, you know? The Weasleys don't have any kind of claim on red hair and freckles, after all.
- She does wear dresses, and not just on fancy occasions, thankyouverymuch. She just normally either wears jeans or leggings underneath, or she wears combat boots with them. But if you want to see her in a fancy dress, you probably shouldn't hold your breath, those only come out for her father's parties.
- Despite her parents' not-subtle-at-all hints to the contrary, Ava has no inclinations at the moment to either a.) settle down with a nice young man, or b.) give up her cemetery job to come work for the family company. She's at least nice whenever her parents bring it up. If anyone else does, they probably get a sarcastic response.
- She has a small angel pendant that her mother gave her when she was seven. She never takes it off and calls it her guardian angel. If you point out that she still gets hurt, even with it on, she points out that she's at least never died.
- Her favorite curse is "Helga's flowery knickers!"
- Don't try to talk to her in the morning before she's had her first cup of coffee. Just … don't. It's really better for everyone involved if you give her a wide berth before she gets caffeinated.
- She has no piercings or tattoos. She figures that it's probably for the best that she not willingly put herself so close to sharp pointy needles.
- She wears a spinner ring on her left thumb, which she is always playing with.